If you ask a youngster the question, “Was there really an ice age?” they
might say rather quickly that there was. Then they may tell you that there
were two of them. Of course, if you listen much longer, they will tell you that
they saw both of those movies in the theater.

The ice age is a popular topic that is often discussed in school, at home,
or in Hollywood. Sadly, most people hear the secular/uniformitarian view and
don’t look at this subject from a biblical perspective. This is where it gets interesting,
though. The secular view has no good mechanism to cause a single ice
age, let alone the many they propose. But the Bible does have a mechanism.
Let’s take a closer look.

Before I get too deep, let me define a few words you’ll need to know to
help clarify this chapter:

Figures 1 and
2. The extent of
the Ice Age over
North America
and Eurasia.

Glacier: a large mass of ice that has accumulated from snow over the years
and is slowly moving from a higher place.

Moraines: stones, boulders, and debris that have been carried and dropped
by a glacier.

Uniformitarianism: the belief that rates today are the same as they were in
the past, without the possibility of major catastrophes like worldwide floods.

Interglacial: a short period of warming between glacier growth/movement
that caused glaciers to melt away.

Ice cores: cores of ice that have been drilled down into a glacier.

Ice Age: when seen in capital letters, refers to the biblical post-Flood Ice Age.

An ice age is defined as a time of extensive glacial activity in which substantially
more of the land is covered by ice. During the Ice Age that ended
several thousand years ago, 30 percent of the land surface of the earth was
covered by ice (Figures 1 and 2). In North America an ice sheet covered almost
all of Canada and the northern United States.

We know the extent of the Ice Age in the recent past because similar features,
as observed around glaciers today, are also found in formerly glaciated
areas, such as lateral and terminal moraines. A lateral moraine is a mound of
rocks of all sizes deposited on the side of a moving glacier, while a terminal, or
end, moraine is a mound of rocks bulldozed in front of the glacier.

Figure 3. Horseshoe-shaped lateral and end
moraines plowed up by
a glacier moving out of
a valley in the northern
Wallowa Mountains
of northeast Oregon.
Beautiful Wallowa Lake
fills the depression
within the moraines.

Figure 3 shows a horseshoe-shaped moraine from a glacier that spread
out from a valley in the Wallowa Mountains of northeast Oregon. The two lateral
moraines are 600 feet (183 m) high, while the end moraine is 100
feet (30 m) high, enclosing beautiful Wallowa Lake. Scratched bedrock and
boulders are telltale signs of previous glaciation (Figures 4 and 5), which are
similar to such features found around glaciers today (Figures 6 and 7).

Figures 4 and 5.
Striated bedrock and
boulders from an ice
cap in the northern
Rocky Mountains
that spread through
the Sun River
Canyon out onto
the high plains,
west of Great Falls,
Montana.

Figures 6 and 7.
Scratched bedrock
and boulder from the
Athabasca Glacier in
the Canadian Rocky
Mountains.

Secular/Uniformitarian Belief

Figure 8.
Display of
four ice
ages at the
College of
Eastern
Utah
Prehistoric
Museum at
Price, Utah,
taken in
2006.

Secular/uniformitarian scientists used to believe that there were four ice ages
during the past few million years. However, the idea of four ice ages was rejected
in the 1970s in favor of thirty or more ice ages separated by interglacials.1 Such a
switch was forced by a paradigm change in glaciology toward belief in the astronomical
model of the ice ages (or “Milankovitch mechanism,” as it is called). The
idea of four ice ages still lingers in public museum displays, though (Figure 8).

The astronomical model postulates regularly repeating ice ages caused by
the changing orbital geometry of the earth. Secular glaciologists believe that
over the past 800,000 years there were, allegedly, eight ice ages, each lasting
about 100,000 years.2 The glacial phase supposedly dominated for 90,000
years, while the interglacial phase lasted only 10,000 years. Accordingly, the story continues
that beyond 800,000 years, the ice ages are believed to have
cycled every 40,000 years or so.

The secular/uniformitarian model now holds that the Antarctic Ice Sheet
developed around 40 million years ago and reached general equilibrium about
15 million years ago.3 The Greenland Ice Sheet, they say, is younger, having
developed only a few million years ago.

Uniformitarian scientists further believe four “ancient ice ages” occurred
during geological time (Table 1). These ice ages supposedly occurred hundreds
of millions to several billion years ago, with each ice age lasting tens to
hundreds of millions of years. Ancient ice ages are deduced from features in
the rock that seem to indicate glaciation.

Geological Period

Secular Approximate Age Range (million years ago)

Late Paleozoic

256–338

Late Ordovician

429–445

Late Proterozoic

520–950

Early Proterozoic

2200–2400

Table 1. The four main “ancient ice ages” within the uniformitarian paradigm and
their inferred age range in millions of years before the present. The age ranges for
the earliest “ice ages” are admittedly rough estimates.4

Severe Difficulties with Secular/Uniformitarian Beliefs

Secular/uniformitarian scientists have great difficulty explaining any recent
ice ages based on rates they observe today. They have proposed dozens
of hypotheses, but all have serious flaws. One problem is that the summer
temperatures in the northern United States would have to cool more than
50°F (28°C) accompanied by a huge increase in snow. What would trigger or
sustain such a dramatic climate change that would persist for thousands of
years? David Alt of the University of Montana in Missoula recently admitted,
“Although theories abound, no one really knows what causes ice ages.”5

Ancient ice ages have been somewhat controversial over the years, but recently
some uniformitarian scientists have come out with the shocking belief
that some Proterozoic ice ages were global.6 This belief is based on paleomagnetic
data that supposedly shows certain rocks, believed to be from ancient
ice ages, were marine and equatorial. Because of the reflection of sunlight
from a white surface, it is likely that a glaciated earth would never melt.
However, advocates of “snowball earth” state not only that such a glaciation
completely melted but also that temperatures following glaciation ended up
much warmer than today. Such a “freeze-fry” hypothesis indicates that the
concept of ancient ice ages is unsound.

Did the Flood Trigger the Ice Age?

If uniformitarian scientists have severe difficulties accounting for ice ages,
how would creationists explain an ice age or multiple ice ages? Let’s start with
the recent ice age.

When attempting to account for ice ages, the uniformitarian scientists do
not consider one key element—the Genesis Flood. What if there truly were a
worldwide Flood? How would it have affected the climate? A worldwide Flood
would have caused major changes in the earth’s crust, as well as earth movements
and tremendous volcanism. It would have also greatly disturbed the climate.

A shroud of volcanic dust and aerosols (very small particles) would have
been trapped in the stratosphere for several years following the Flood. These
volcanic effluents would have then reflected some of the sunlight back to space
and caused cooler summers, mainly over large landmasses of the mid and high
latitudes. Volcanoes would have also been active during the Ice Age and gradually
declined as the earth settled down. Abundant evidence shows substantial
Ice Age volcanism, which would have replenished the dust and aerosols in
the stratosphere.7 The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets also show abundant
volcanic particles and acids in the Ice Age portion of the ice cores.8

An ice age also requires huge amounts of precipitation. The Genesis account
records the “fountains of the great deep” bursting forth during the Flood.
Crustal movements would have released hot water from the earth’s crust along
with volcanism and large underwater lava flows, which would have added
heat to the ocean. Earth movement and rapid Flood currents would have then
mixed the warm water, so that after the Flood the oceans would be warm from
pole to pole. There would be no sea ice. A warm ocean would have had much
higher evaporation than the present cool ocean surface. Most of this evaporation
would have occurred at mid and high latitudes, close to the developing ice
sheets, dropping the moisture on the cold continent. This is a recipe for powerful
and continuous snowstorms that can be estimated using basic meteorology.9
Therefore, to cause an ice age, rare conditions are required—warm oceans for
high precipitation, and cool summers for lack of melting the snow. Only then
can it accumulate into an ice sheet.

The principles of atmospheric science can also estimate areas of high oceanic
evaporation, the eventual depth of the ice, and even the timing of the Ice Age.
Numerical simulations of precipitation in the polar regions using conventional
climate models with warm sea surface temperatures have demonstrated that ice
sheets thousands of feet thick could have accumulated in less than 500 years.10

A Rapid Ice Age

Most creationists agree that there was one major Ice Age following the
Flood. The timing of the Ice Age is quite significant, since uniformitarians
claim that each ice age over the past 800,000 years lasted about 100,000
years. To estimate the time for a post-Flood Ice Age, we need to know how
long the volcanism lasted and the cooling time of the oceans. Once these two
mechanisms for the Ice Age wane, the ice sheets will reach a maximum and
then begin to melt. So, an estimate of the time for the Ice Age can be worked
out based on the available moisture for snow and the cooling time of the
ocean (the primary mechanism) in a cool post-Flood climate.

I used budget equations for the cooling of the ocean and atmosphere,
which are simply based on heat inputs minus heat outputs—the difference
causing the change in temperatures. Since there is no way to be precise, I
used minimums and maximums for the variables in the equations in order
to bracket the time. The best estimate is about 500 years after the Flood to
reach glacial maximum with an average ice and snow depth of about 2,300
feet (700 m) in the Northern Hemisphere and 4,000 feet (1,220 m) on
Antarctica.11

Once the conditions for the Ice Age ended, those ice sheets in unfavorable
areas melted rapidly. Antarctica and Greenland, possessing a favorable
latitude and altitude, would continue to grow during deglaciation and afterward.
To calculate the melting rate for the ice sheets over North America and
Eurasia, I used the energy balance over a snow cover, which gives a faster rate
than the uniformitarians propose based on their models.

An energy balance equation is a straightforward and more physical method
of calculating the melt rate. Using maximum and minimum values for the
variable in the melt equation, I obtained a best estimate of the average melt
rate along the periphery (a 400-mile [645-km] long strip) of the ice sheet
in North America at about 33 feet/year (10 m/year). Such a melting rate
compares favorably with current melt rates for the melting zones of Alaskan,
Icelandic, and Norwegian glaciers today. At this rate, the periphery of the
ice sheets melts in less than 100 years. Interior areas of ice sheets would melt
more slowly, but the ice would be gone in about 200 years. The ice sheets melt
so fast, catastrophic flooding would be expected, such as with the bursting of
glacial Lake Missoula described later in this chapter.

Therefore, the total length of time for a post-Flood Ice Age is about 700
years. It was indeed a rapid Ice Age. This is an example of bringing back the
Flood into earth history. As a result, processes that seem too slow at today’s
rates were much faster in the past. The Flood was never disproved; it was
arbitrarily rejected in the 1700s and 1800s by secular intellectuals in favor of
slow processes over millions of years.

How Many Ice Ages?

Still, there is the claim of many ice ages. Most formerly glaciated areas
show evidence for only one ice age, and a substantial amount of information
indicates only one ice age.12 The idea of multiple ice ages is essentially a uniformitarian
assumption. Today this idea is strongly based on oxygen isotope
ratios from seafloor sediments. The paleothermometers developed from these
data assume highly questionable statistical comparisons between peaks and
valleys in temperature, which are claimed to correspond to orbital changes in
the heating of the earth. In a provocative paper concluding that only one ice
sheet covered southern and central Alberta late in the uniformitarian timescale,
Robert Young and others stated: “Glacial reconstructions commonly assume
a multiple-glaciation hypothesis in all areas that contain a till cover.”13

Areas that appear to have evidence of more than one ice age can be reinterpreted
to be the deposits from one ice sheet that advanced and retreated over a
short period. The more modern understanding of glacial activity indicates that
ice sheets are very dynamic. We do not need 100,000 years for each ice age or
2.5 million years for multiple ice ages.

One of the key assumptions in the multiple glaciation hypothesis is the astronomical
model of ice ages. This mechanism is based on cyclical past changes
in the geometry of the earth’s orbit. Uniformitarian scientists believe that a
decrease in solar radiation at about 60° N in summer, resulting from orbital
changes, causes repeating ice ages, either every 100,000 years or every 40,000
years. By matching wiggles in variables taken from deep-sea cores, uniformitarian
scientists believe they have proven the astronomical mechanism of multiple
ice ages.14 There are many problems with this model and relating deep-sea cores
to it; mainly, the decrease in sunshine is too small.15 Didier Paillard stated,

Nevertheless, several problems in classical astronomical theory of paleoclimate
have indeed been identified: (1) The main cyclicity in the
paleoclimate record is close to 100,000 years, but there is [sic] no significant
orbitally induced changes in the radiative [sunshine] forcing of the
Earth in this frequency range (the “100-kyr Problem”).16

Although the main cycle in the astronomical model is 100,000 years,
the change in sunshine at high northern latitudes is insignificant for such a
dramatic change as an ice age.

Is the Ice Age Biblical?

Since the Flood offers a viable explanation for the Ice Age, one could
expect that the Ice Age would be mentioned in the Bible. It is possible that
the book of Job, written about 500 years or so after the Flood, may include
a reference to the Ice Age in Job 38:29–30, which says, “From whose womb
comes the ice? And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth? The waters harden
like stone, and the surface of the deep is frozen.” However, Job could have
observed frost and lake ice during winter in Palestine, especially if temperatures
were colder because of the Ice Age. The reason the Ice Age is not directly
discussed in the Bible is probably because the Scandinavian ice sheet and
mountain ice caps were farther north than the region where the Bible was
written. Only an increase in the snow coverage of Mt. Hermon and possibly
more frequent snowfalls on the high areas of the Middle East would have
been evident to those living in Palestine.

How Are “Ancient Ice Ages” Explained?

The evidence for “ancient ice ages” is found in the hard rocks; these deposits
are not on the surface like the deposits from the post-Flood Ice Age.
There are substantial difficulties in interpreting these rocks as from ancient
ice ages.17 An alternative mechanism can easily explain these deposits within
a biblical framework. This mechanism is gigantic submarine landslides that
occurred during the Genesis Flood.

The Mystery of the Woolly Mammoths

Millions of woolly mammoth bones, tusks, and a few carcasses have
been found frozen in the surface sediments of Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon
Territory of Canada—a major mystery of uniformitarian paleoclimate.
The woolly mammoths were part of a Northern Hemisphere community
of animals that lived and died during the post-Flood Ice Age.18 Woolly
mammoths probably died after the Flood because there are thousands of
carcasses scattered across Alaska and Siberia resting above Flood deposits.
And there must have been sufficient time for the mammoths to have
repopulated these regions after the Flood. The post-Flood Ice Age provides
an explanation for the mystery of the woolly mammoths, as well as many
other Ice Age mysteries.

Figure 9. Large
dust drift to the
top of a house
during the dust
bowl era in the
Midwest.

The mammoths spread into these northern areas during early and middle
Ice Age time because summers were cooler and winters warmer. The areas
were unglaciated (just the mountains glaciated) and a rich grassland. However,
late in the Ice Age, winter temperatures turned colder and the climate
drier with strong wind storms. The mammoths died by the millions and were
buried by dust, which later froze, preserving the mammoths. Severe dust
storms that produce tall dust drifts (Figure 9) can also explain a number of
the secondary mysteries, such as some carcasses that show evidence of suffocation
in a generally standing position, and how they become entombed into
rock-hard permafrost (for a more complete treatment of this subject, please
see my book, Frozen in Time).

Is Glacial Lake Missoula Related to the Ice Age?

At the peak of the Ice Age, a finger of the ice sheet in western Canada and
the northwest United States filled up the valleys of northern Idaho. A huge lake
2,000 feet (610 m) deep was formed in the valleys of western Montana. This
was glacial Lake Missoula (Figure 10). In the course of time, the lake burst and
emptied in a few days, causing an immense flood several hundred feet deep that carved out canyons and produced
many flood features from eastern
Washington into northwest Oregon
(Figure 11).

This flood can help us understand
the global Flood. Interestingly,
the Lake Missoula
flood was rejected for 40 years
despite tremendous evidence
because of the anti-biblical bias
in historical science.19

Now this flood is not only
accepted, but uniformitarian scientists
now believe many more
of them occurred. They postulate
40 to 100 at the peak of
their last ice age, with perhaps
hundreds more from previous
ice ages. However, the evidence is substantial that there was only one gigantic Lake Missoula flood, with possibly
several minor floods afterward.20

Figure 11. The Potholes, remnants of a 400-foot (120 m) high waterfall. The lakes at the bottom are remnant plunge pools.

What about Ice Cores?

Uniformitarian scientists claim to be able to count annual layers in the
Greenland ice sheet to determine its age, in the same way people can count
tree rings. In doing so, they arrive at 110,000 years near the bottom of the
Greenland ice sheet. Similar claims for a much greater age are made for the
Antarctica ice sheet. These claims are equivocal and are essentially based on the
uniformitarian belief that the ice sheets are millions of years old. The data from
ice cores can be better explained within the post-Flood Ice Age model, which
dramatically reduces the calculated age to well within the biblical limit.21

Conclusion

Although a major mystery of uniformitarian history, the Ice Age is readily
explained by the climatic consequences of the Genesis Flood—it was a short
Ice Age of about 700 years, and there was only one Ice Age.22 We do not need
the hundred thousand years for one ice age, or the few million years for multiple
ice ages, as claimed by uniformitarian scientists.

Even their claim of ancient ice ages in the hard rocks can be accounted for
by gigantic submarine landslides during the Flood. The post-Flood rapid Ice
Age can also account for a number of major mysteries and other interesting
phenomena that occurred during the Ice Age, such as the Lake Missoula flood
and the life and death of the woolly mammoths in Siberia and elsewhere.
When we stick to the Genesis account of the Flood and the short scriptural
timescale, major secular/uniformitarian mysteries are readily explained.23

The New Answers Book

The New Answers Book is packed with biblical answers to over 25 of the most important questions on creation/evolution and the Bible. Richly illustrated with photos, charts, and graphs, this book is a must-read for everyone who desires to better understand the world in which they live. Perhaps the most helpful benefit is that each chapter is “stand alone” and can be read in any order.